There were large numbers of people in the previous government who were coming here on visas related to activities they were not undertaking, says Browne. I think he means "under" the previous government. Either that or I've missed a good scoop.

Browne says he has learned a lot from Sir Terry Leahy's book about his company, Tesco. Addressing Harris's comments about healthcare not being comparable to a supermarket, he says: "It is the height of arrogance to think that there is nothing to be learned from the choices millions of people make every day … and the public sector has nothing to learned."

Harris says social liberals are not all opposed to public sector reform. But academies and free schools create two-tierism, says Harris. The "mantra of choice" goes against creating effective public services, he says.The Orange Book didn't make the coalition possible, Harris says - the parliamentary arithmetic made it possible.

Clegg's apology should actually have been for not fighting harder to keep the tuition fees pledge rather than ditching it at the fist opportunity, Harris says.

A questioner is criticised for not answering a question but instead "giving an overview of 19th and 20th century history".

"Well, you guys started it," the delegate points out, reasonably.

He then tells the hall he "doesn't give a toss about Orange Bookers or social democrat Liberals".

Why did you attend the meeting then, the chairman asks him, reasonably.

The next questioner says he gives "a large toss" about Orange Bookers, which gives an old cliche new life, but not in a very pleasant way.

My colleague Nicholas Watt speaks shortly after, making a passing and innocuous reference to "gay marriage"; he is immediately "corrected" by several voices - he should have said "equal marriage", it seems.

Former MP Lembit Opik speaks, introducing himself as "Lembit Opik, or at least I used to be Lembit Opik."

He suggests there is no uniting ideology in the Orange Book. Opposite ideas on things such as raising children, nuclear power and the EU are expressed in different essays in the book, and its follow-up, Britain after Blair.

"What does it mean to be an Orange Booker except to be part of a power base that has been superbly successful?" Opik asks.

Marshall says Britain after Blair is not a coherent book, but the Orange Book stood for four pillars of liberalism: social liberalism, economic liberalism, personal liberalism, and political liberalism.

But he criticises the coalition for slashing investment when it came to power: "Keynes would never have done that," he says. He blames the civil service, George Osborne, and "us for not standing up to him".

At the 2010 election the Lib Dems had abandoned this kind of "oppositionitis", Marshall says, with one exception: the promise not to raise tuition fees which, he says, Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Danny Alexander all believed would be unaffordable.

Paul Marshall, co-editor with David Laws of the Orange Book eight years ago, speaks next. He chairs Ark, a chain of academy schools, and backs more marketisation in schools.

Marshall says they only printed 3,000 copies of the Orange Book, which meant the book is much more talked about than read.

He says the book was intended to put the case for economic liberalism as the modern answer to Britain's problems, rather than socialism. The Orange Bookers felt that this pillar of the Liberal Democrat party was missing in 2004 - that meant the party was unbalanced: "a table needs four legs". Erm …

The Lib Dems of 2004 had set its face against public sector reform, Marshall says, to some discontented muttering from the audience.

We have now reached the limit of the amount of tax the government can raise, Marshall claims. That's why all the new taxes on pasties, caravans and so on the government tried to introduce in the last budget had to be abandoned shortly afterwards.

He reads out Lib Dem policies at the 2005 election - a combination, he says, of unrealistically high spending commitments and "bribes" to constituencies such as students.

Why don't we operate healthcare like a supermarket, Harris asks rhetorically. You can't, he says, make the analogy between an informed consumer choosing their bread and margarine and a patient, who (he implies) knows next to nothing about what medical treatment they should be given.

Evan Harris takes the stage. He says that like Jeremy Browne he regrets that he is not David Laws. That gets a big laugh - presumably the implication is that he would do a very different job to Laws if he were a minister.

We cannot go into the next election after having attacked one party for five years and one party for one month, Harris says. He says that would not make the Lib Dems credible as an independent party.

Unlike Browne, he thinks the Lib Dem should be equidistant between the two main parties. Browne had said earlier that the Lib Dems ought to choose their positions on their own merits, not on how they related to those of Labour and the Tories.

He says he is jealous that his own Lib Dem grouping, Social Liberal Forum, does not have the resources of the Orange Bookers - but "it was ever thus" regarding "the right", he says.

Juliette Jowit has wrapped up her Reality check on the pensions for property scheme and thought you might be interested in the main point to emerge. She writes:

The Lib Dems say that realistically only 250,000 people with pension pots of £40,000 or more would be likely to take part in the scheme (for reasons explained in my blog!), but of these they are assuming only about 5% will actually take up the initiative. This amounts to a tiny 12,500 people. Better than nothing, they say, but perhaps nothing like as dramatic as Nick Clegg's announcement on prime (political) TV suggested.

The Orange Book was published eight years ago and set out the ideas of the rightwing pro-market wing of the Lib Dem party, in some ways laying the groundwork for today's coalition with the Tories.

Jeremy Browne opens by saying he thinks he shares many of David Laws's views on this. He says that if people want an oppositionist social democratic party they might be better if in a social democratic party that is in opposition: Labour. The original Orange Book has grown to be caricatured, he says. It did always envisage a role for the state, he says.

He says that Lib Dems can stray into "liberal paternalism" - an oxymoron. Sometimes Lib Dems seem to be saying you can do anything you want, as long as it conforms to Lib Dem principles. He says he would not want to tell people not to drink fizzy drinks, for example.

He acknowledges that the private sector is not always perfect. At the Olympics the army did a better job than G4S, although G4S are guarding this conference, he points out to laughter. But as a rule the private sector is preferable, because of the Darwinian demands of the market. A BMW is better than a Trabant, he says.

Hi all. This is Paul Owen taking over the blog for the next hour or two.

Despite Nick Clegg’s grinning face on the cover, the Lib Dem conference agenda is not a cheery document. On page two the agenda begins: “Because only 2 things in life are certain...” those two things being, of course, death and taxes, in Benjamin Franklin's famous phrase. So that's death introduced as a topic one page in. It's fair to say that the Lib Dems are not following the Reagan/early Cameron "let the sunshine in" optimist-wins playbook here.

I'm at the Grand hotel for a fringe meeting on the big division in Lib Dem politics: Orange Book economic rightwingers v social democrats. Evan Harris, the former MP who has sometimes been the voice of leftwing Lib Dem rebellion, and Jeremy Browne, the new Foreign Office minister, are both due to speak. David Laws, the totemic Lib Dem rightwinger who has just been brought back in from the cold, unfortunately seems to be absent.

This scuttlebutt, this gossip has to be put to rest once and for all. The person best qualified to take our party forward is Nick Clegg. I am unequivocal in my support for him and so we should all be and so should all our MPs and peers in Parliament.

• Nick Clegg has said the government should support whatever Lord Justice Leveson recommends, provided his proposals are "proportionate and workable", even if they involve some element of statutory regulation of the press.

• Clegg has said that the Lib Dems will not accept further cuts to public spending in the current spending round.

We might rejig the details of it, but the spending plans as they’re set out will be stuck to. Not a penny more, not a penny less.

That means that he would block an attempt by George Osborne to cut public spending in the autumn statement in December. There have been fears that Osborne could be tempted to do this because, without spending cuts, he is unlikely to meet his goal of having debt falling by the end of this parliament.

• Jon Cruddas, the head of Labour's policy review, has told a fringe meeting at the Lib Dem conference that he could imagine the Lib Dems and Labour working together.

If you want my view, and this will be controversial in my own party, I think the effect of the Lib Dems in the government has been a benign force in terms of checking some of the worst elements in the Conservative party ... There is a long list of prospective policy areas where I think if we could work together in the national interest that is good.

• The Lib Dems have urged the government to strengthen the powers of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. They passed a motion saying the IPCC should be able to compel police officers involved in an incident leading to a death to give evidence. As the Press Association reports, the motion notes the IPCC's "increasing difficulties" in investigating police officers and police staff who refuse to be interviewed about complaints. Addressing members, Duwayne Brooks, a Lib Dem councillor in Lewisham and a friend of Stephen Lawrence's, said public confidence in the IPCC was "at an all time low as investigations into deaths and serious injury drag on for months and months". He said: "Its independence is being questioned as many of the investigators are still former police officers while its ability to recommend action against private contractor staff is non-existent."

• The Lib Dems have passed a motion calling for an independent review of the Welfare Reform Act. It also said the government's policy of only paying contributory employment support allowance for a limited amount of time was "counterproductive and harmful".

• The Lib Dems have backed a motion saying the law should be changed to allow medically assisted dying, subject to rigorous safeguards to prevent abuse.

That's it from me for today. My colleague Paul Owen will be taking over the blog for the rest of the evening and he will be writing all the posts from now on.

The Fabian Society has published some research apparently showing that Lib Dem supporters have more in common with Labour supporters than they do with Conservative supporters. Here's an extract from the news release.

54% of today’s Lib Dem supporters would consider voting Labour, while only 36% would consider the Conservatives. This is on top of Lib Dem deserters since 2010 splitting 4 to 1 in Labour’s favour.

43% of the remaining Lib Dem supporters describe themselves as on the left of politics, compared to 53% of Labour supporters and 1% of Conservatives.

8% of Lib Dem, 6% of Labour and 60% of Conservative supporters describe themselves as on the right of politics.

Finally Labour and Lib Dem supporters see David Cameron’s politics in the same light: 44% of Lib Dems and 52% of Labour supporters describe him as very/fairly right wing compared to 24% of Conservatives.

And here's a quote from Andrew Harrop, the Fabian Society general secretary.

The relationship between Labour and the Liberal Democrats goes far beyond a few text message exchanges between Ed Miliband and Vince Cable. Even after two years of the coalition Liberal Democrat supporters remain much closer to Labour than Tory voters.

My starting point is pretty simple. We have asked Judge Leveson and his colleagues to do a job. We, the government, asked him to do that, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Assuming he comes up with proposals which are proportionate and workable, we should implement them. Simple as that.

Clegg says that there were a lot of myths about what statutory regulation might mean and he said that the Lib Dems would not support "illiberal statutory regulation". He supported the right of the Daily Mail to write rude things about him, he said. But people had to accept that that Press Complaints Commission was "a joke".

Everybody agrees you need an independent form of scutiny and accountability. The question is how do you ensure independence not just for today but for good if you don't have that reflected in some sense in statute.

• He said the Lib Dems would not accept any changes to current spending plans.

The spending plans as they are set out will be stuck to, not a penny more, not a penny less.

• He said he would not accept the proposal being floated by the Treasury to freeze benefit payments for two years. "That directly hits the most vulnerable in society," he says.

• He appeared to criticise George Osborne for suggesting that the bulk of future savings should come from the welfare budget.

What I can assure you is that we will not allow some of these wild suggestions that have been made from the right in British politics, that all the savings shoudl come from welfare, "let's just scoop out a £10bn-sized hole from welfare". No.

The £10bn figure was raised by Osborne himself, in his last budget, when he was illustrating the kind of savings that might have to be made in the future.

• He said he was "very sceptical" about whether nuclear power could operate without a public subsidy.

Others, like me, are just very sceptical about the economics, because I just so far have not seen any evidence of any successful nuclear industry anywhere around the world which hasn't in the end relied upon great big dollops of public subsidy.

That was why he insisted on the coalition agreement saying the nuclear industry should not receive an industry-specific subsidy. But if the industry could find a way of operating without such a subsidy, that would be fine, he suggested.

• He said he was a strong supporter of High Speed Rail. The government should follow the example of the Victorians, who weren't afraid to create infrastructure even if it involved disruption, he said.

• He was criticised by a delegate for breaking the tuition fee pledge. One questioner asked Clegg why he had not apologised earlier, and Clegg said that he did not think people would have listened if he had apologised two years ago. But then a delegate said he was missing the point.

Nick, the real problem is ... the fact that we were the party that weren't going to break promises and the first thing we did was break a promise. That is what people find so difficult to forgive.

The Clegg Q&A is over. He was strong on the Leveson report, insisting that, as long as his recommendations are workable, they should be implemented, but there were also some interesting answers on the economy, on welfare, on nuclear power and on HS2.

Q: The press get away with lying. Something should be done. Do you agree press apologies should be of the same size as the original article?

Clegg says that, as someone who has had false things written about him, he sympathises with the questioner's outrage.

He says the press are like animals around an increasingly small pool. People are getting their information from another source. That is why you are getting a "hysterical tone" from papers. They are trying different platforms. None of them have quite worked it out.

Although the mendacity of the press is sometimes extraordinary, it is not for liberals to want to stop this. He would rather live in a free society with a raucous press, than in a less free society with a tame press.

Q: Will you support the Leveson recommendations if they involve statutory regulation of the press?

Clegg says the government should see what Leveson says and then implement his recommendations.

The test will be: can ministers look the Dowler family in the eye, and assure them that the government is implementing Leveson.

As an "old-fasioned liberal", he would hate to see anything that could be construed as politicians interfering with the press.

Britain benefits massively from having such a lively, raucous, dynamic press, he says.

Q: Will you act with Labour on this?

Clegg says this party will never accept illiberal statutory regulation of the press.

People are creating a spectre of statutory regulation that is not going to happen.

The question is different, he says. It's a matter of ensuring that the press are accountable. It has to be independent accountability. But can you have an independent regulator without putting that in statute.

The Press Complaints Commission had some good people working for it, but it was laughable because it was not independent, he says.

Many people in the press want an independent regulator.

Assuming Leveson comes up with a workable answer, "we should implement it".

Q: Only 2% of Britain's ancient woodlands are left. Shouldn't the government block High Speed Rail (HS2).

Clegg says he does not know the situation in relation to ancient woodlands. But he is a passionate supporter of HS2. Britain is still relying on Victorian infrastructure. Those people were bold; they swept aside objections. Now the government needs to rewire the UK, figuratively and literally.

The UK is too divided. Economists might question the benefits. But Clegg says he does not think you can ever fully quantify the benefits.

Clegg says it's a draft bill. Julian Huppert has been doing a "superb job" looking at the bill. If the problems raised by the joint committee looking at it cannot be addressed, then the bill will not go ahead.

Q: But it's not a Lib Dem committee. Will you veto the bill if Tory and Labour MPs on the committee are in favour?

Clegg says he will take advice from Huppert on this. He says he is not an expert on it.

The police can currently find out if someone makes a call on a mobile phone. But they cannot find out about the content of the call.

The bill is designed to give them the same capability in relation to Skype etc.

But some people say that this would give the police access to content too.

Q: Why did you not apologise for the tuition fee pledge two years ago?

Clegg says he was not sure if anyone would have listened then. There are people who won't listen now. But if he had said it was not right to make that pledge - it was an unqualified pledge - during the heat of the tuition fees row, it would have fallen on "stony ground".

By "intuition", he feels that now is a time when people might listen, he says.

Ministers have had a chance to explain the policy, and the fact that people won't have to pay £9,000 up front.

Q: But if you had made an apology earlier, you might not have alienated students so much?

Clegg says there was "so much emotion" around then that people would not have listened.

Now people realise the system is not as "heinous" as people claimed.

It's an issue of judgment, he says.

He had been wanting to say for a long time that it was a mistake to make such an unqualified pledge, particularly when the Lib Dems were likely to end up in coalition with one of two parties, both of whom were committed to raising fees.

In addition to the policy stuff, I'd personally like to know what the general atmosphere of the conference is like, if such a thing is tangible enough to report on. Is it apocolyptic? Depressed? Blindly self-congratulatory? Stiff upper lip? Is the attendance down on previous years?

It's a fair question, and I think the answer is - downbeat, rather than suicidal. I have been to party conferences dominated by a mood of despair - the Tory one just before Iain Duncan Smith was deposed springs to mind - but this isn't in that category. The Lib Dems have some experience at being unpopular. As for numbers, I have not got the official figures, but it does feel more empty than it was last year.

The consumer organisation Which? has welcomed Ed Davey's announcement about energy switching. This is from its executive director, Richard Lloyd.

There are steps in the right direction in Ed Davey's speech. It's true that collective switching can give consumers the power to get a better deal - the Which?Big Switch this year saved thousands of people collectively over £8 million on their energy bills - so it's good to see the promise of more support for local switching schemes.

But massive green investment comes with a huge price tag for consumers. Which? wants more fundamental reform to the broken energy market to properly protect people from footing unfair, unaffordable bills driven up by a combination of uncompetitive energy giants and costly government policy.

Paul Owen has just come back from a lively fringe meeting on whether Labour and the Lib Dems can ever work together, attended by Lord Adonis - a Liberal councillor who became a Labour minister - and Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Lib Dem leader.

Adonis and Campbell were full of memorable quotes. Adonis was late, and complained: "When I was transport secretary, the trains never left early." He said that his hero, SDP leader Roy Jenkins, had never approved of lunchtime fringe meetings. He once ate a sandwich and vowed never to do so again. Of Lords reform, he quoted another Liberal hero, David Lloyd George, as saying: "When crossing a chasm, it is advisable to do so in one leap."

Campbell was the least positive about the prospect of Lib-Labbery, pointing out that partisan emotions "run very deep indeed". He said: "I have not forgotten being assailed by Barbara Castle about the inequities of the Liberal party in the 1920s … 25 minutes of real bile."

And when the lights in the Hilton Metropole conference room went out suddenly, Campbell shouted: "These must be Tory cuts!"

Policywise, Adonis praised the pupil premium, one of the Lib Dems' key policies, and said he'd like to work with education ministers Michael Gove and David Laws to make it more "hard-edged", given recent findings that not all schools were using the money as intended.

And he passionately urged the Lib Dems to pressure the government to abandon austerity and embark on a Plan B: infrastructure investment, housebuilding, and a plan for youth unemployment. Campbell said that in 2010 the coalition could never have embarked on anything other than austerity for fear of the market reaction, but Adonis dismissed this: "Provided you were credible in 2010 you could have done so," he said. At this rate, the only thing the coalition would be remembered for in the future would be austerity, Adonis said.

On the question of the Lib Dem leadership, Campbell said: "This scuttlebutt and gossip should be put to rest once and for all." He said he was "unequivocal in his support" for Nick Clegg and MPs and peers should be too.

Nick Gibb, the Conservative MP and former education minister, has expressed some concern about Nick Clegg's call for a fresh tax on the wealthy. This is what he told Sky News this morning. I've taken the quote from PoliticsHome.

I think it is important that when we’re facing severe cuts in public spending that everyone does pay their fair share ... But I would just say this one thing; we’ve got to be careful as a country not to be sending out a message that this is a country that is always going to attack financial success because we do need to encourage overseas investors to come to this country.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, has put out a statement saying that voters should not trust Nick Clegg's comments on the Andrew Marr show about tax fairness.

Nobody will be fooled by Nick Clegg's empty words on tax. This is the man who backed a £3bn tax cut for millionaires in the budget while asking millions of pensioners and families to pay more. There's nothing fair about a family with children paying an average £511 extra from changes the government has brought in this year, while millionaires will get a £40,000 tax cut next year.

Friends of the Earth has criticised Ed Davey for not making a clear commitment to decarbonise the electricity industry by 2030. This is from Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth's executive director.

Delivering a carbon-free electricity system is the acid test of Ed Davey's term in office - if the energy bill doesn't include a legally-binding target to decarbonise the power sector by 2030, he should resign.

Investing in the UK's huge clean energy potential is essential to power a strong, modern economy and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Warm words are not enough - Davey must stand up to the anti-green chancellor and a reckless dash for gas that will scupper our climate change targets and lock the economy into spiralling fuel bills for generations to come.

My colleague Helene Mulholland has more details about how Clegg's "pension for property" scheme could work.

The scheme is currently being looked at both by the treasury and thedepartment of work and pension and would involve borrowing against thelump sum, which is typically around 25% of the pension pot. Around aquarter of million people have a pension pot of £40,000, which wouldallow to borrow a deposit of £10,000 for their child or grandchild.

Mortgage lenders and pension funds have been approached and seem favourable to the idea, according to a senior Lib Dem source.

We would want to look closely at the detail of the “pension for property” scheme announced today by Nick Clegg. Pensions are designed to mature into a decent retirement income, not for other purposes. Any scheme which uses pensions as a guarantee must ensure that it does not inadvertently make the saver worse off when they retire.

And Simon Hughes, the deputy leader, said the party was bound to recover.

In the middle of every parliament, whenever I’ve been in parliament, when we were in opposition we struggled, and as the general election came nearer and people we were confronted with real choices, our poll rating went up. We are running the country in the most difficult period since the 30s; it’s not surprising the government is not generally popular, but I can assure you that, if you look at the election results on the ground since May, there’ve been great improvements.

• The Lib Dems have said they will oppose the construction of extra runways in the UK. Julian Huppert, the Cambridge MP, said: "Aviation is the fastest-growing contributor to our emissions, we simply must not build airport capacity which would force us to miss those carbon reduction targets, it's as simple as that." He was speaking in a debate on a motion opposing any net increase in the number of UK runways that was passed by the conference.

• Vince Cable has said that introducing regional pay in the public sector would be "completely unacceptable" to the Lib Dems. It would also be "terrible economics", he said.

• Ed Davey, the energy secretary, has announced that he is launching a scheme to encourage councils to promote schemes to encourage people to switch to cheaper energy providers.

In July, we launched ‘Cornwall Together’ – it has brought together the council, the NHS, Unison, voluntary groups and the world famous Eden Project. Cornwall Together will help Cornish people buy energy together – in a collective switch. To get 20,000 Cornish residents to sign up, aiming to save them an average of nearly £200 a year. So millions of pounds stay in the Cornish economy. That matters. That cash boosts local economic growth and cuts fuel poverty. Our policy is to encourage exactly such schemes. So today I am announcing a £5m competition and it’s open to local authorities and community groups across England. We want councils and communities to come up with their own schemes. And we will make only one main rule. Winning schemes must include the fuel poor.

• The Lib Dems have expressed support for a tax on fizzy drinks. They passed a motion on food calling for "a consultation on fiscal measures such as the taxation of heavily sugared drinks". The motion also commits the party to supporting a tax on plastic bags, with the revenue going to community food initiatives.

• Tim Farron, the Lib Dem president, has said that the party should have fought harder to avoid a rise in tuition fees.

We should've fought harder to make sure we kept that promise [the pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees] and I think that's what we are now rightly apologising for as a party - you get some things wrong.

This contradicts Clegg, who said that his apology was not for the tuition fee vote, but for the party's decision to make the pledge saying it would not support a tuition fee increase in the first place.

• Farron has told the party in his conference speech that the conflict between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives over the next two years is the only one that matters in British politics.

• Clegg has said that Andrew Mitchell should be allowed to remain as chief whip unless anything new emerges about his altercation with the police at the gates of Downing Street. "Unless something comes to light about the rival versions, about what was and what was not said that I don't know about, I think he should apologise in full - he's done that, that's right - and draw a line under it in that way," Clegg said.

• Norman Lamb, the care services minister, has announced extra funding for specialised housing for older people. He said that a government fund to stimulate the market in specialised housing will be boosted from £200m to up to £300m and that this could fund up to 9,000 special new homes for people to move in to as they get older.

Davey says he is exploring an idea that would link council tax discounts to people who sign up to the green deal.

He ends by saying that, on Britain's green future, there will be no turning back.

(This morning the Mail on Sunday is touting Davey as a possible leadership candidate. On the evidence of that speech, it is hard to see it. Energy policy is not an exciting topic but, even allowing for the material, Davey's speech was particularly leaden.)

Vince Cable, the business secretary, has been speaking at a "ministerial surgery" Q&A with activists this morning. Here are the key points. I've taken the quotes from PolticsHome.

• Cable said that introducing regional pay was "completely unacceptable" and "terrible economics". He said that although the Lib Dems were prepared to contemplate a measure of public sector pay flexibility in different parts of the country to help recruitment, across-the-board regional pay would be a mistake.

We've made it absolutely clear as a party that we are not going along with some proposal that days that everybody who lives in Wales or everybody who lives in the north of England should be paid less if there I'm the public sector because they live in one region rather than another ... That is completely unacceptable and it's probably terrible economics as well because these regions are very broad brush and you get booming areas of Yorkshire like York and Harrogate and others that are terribly depressed and you have to take account of local variation.

• He said that that plans for a British business bank were being developed. "I can't say anything more about it this morning, but I think tomorrow you may find that we are [taking] that idea forward and explaining how it's going to operate," he said.

The conference has already passed two motions this morning. Here's what they say.

• The Lib Dems have committed the party to opposing the building of extra runways. They passed a motion rejecting new runways at Heathrow, Stansted or Gatwick and rejecting any net increase in the number of runways of serving the UK. The motion also committed the party to opposing plans for a "Boris Island" airport in the Thames Estuary.

• The Lib Dems have passed a motion urging the government to press EU member states to agree to cut emissions by 30% by 2020.

Voters are split on whether they want the coalition to survive, according to a new poll. Here's an extract from a news release I've just received from Ipsos MORI.

The British electorate is evenly split on the future of the Coalition according to an Ipsos MORI poll for Sky News. Four in ten people (42%) say they would like the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to stay in Coalition until a general election in 2015, while the same proportion (43%) want to see the Coalition break up and for an immediate general election to take place.

Nick Clegg is not the only Liberal Democrat talking about his contacts with Labour today. (See 10.33am.) Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, has also revealing the secrets of his mobile phone contacts book.

I've had text messages with Ed Miliband, I have his number on my phone. In sensible, grown up politics you talk to people about how you get the best deal for Britain. I have talked to Tories and Labour people all my life in to parliament.

And here's more from the Lib Dem fringe. My colleague Patrick Kingsley has sent me this.

I was at the Social Liberal Forum late last night, where a panel including Green MP Caroline Lucas and former Lib Dem CEO Chris Rennard discussed: "Disengaging from the Tories." By the time I arrived, there was standing room only — as you might expect on a day when the Lib Dems dipped to 8% in the polls. More surprising, then, was the level of support in the room for the party's continued role in the coalition.

There was genuine belief — certainly from the more vocal barrackers in the audience — that the Liberal Democrats are restraining the Tories' worst excesses in government; and that the electorate would eventually understand. The party, it was argued, had no option in 2010 but to join forces with the Tories: Labour were not to be trusted.

Panellists who attempted to disagree we're met with incredulity — and even anger. "The NHS is being stripped bare. It's absolutely absurd to say: 'we saved the NHS'," argued one panellist, Stuart Weir — a blogger not associated with the party. "All you have at your disposal is words. In government you cannot turn those words into actions."

Rubbish! shouted a man at the back. Who is this idiot? asked someone across the aisle. Pathetic, said another.

"Your powers have been very limited," continued Caroline Lucas. Fees, jobs, and cuts would be the Lib Dem legacy — not the pupil premium. The party should have simply propped up a Tory minority government, rather than joined a full-on coalition. A bit like the Lib-Lab pact in the 70s. "Which got nowhere," someone barracked.

It took Rennard to say something that rang true with the rank-and-file. "It didn't look good when it seemed like we were pleased to be working with the Tories," he said, to a round of hear-hears. The party, he continued, needed to get better at spelling out the disasters they had averted — and not just the Liberal Democrat policies they had averted.

Vince Cable has called the UK Border Agency ruling which may lead to thousands of foreign London Metropolitan university students being deported "very, very unfair" on the students involved, reports Paul Owen.

Speaking at a "ministerial surgery" with delegates on the conference fringe, the business secretary said: "I think the point you've made about students here on an entirely valid basis suddenly having their university education stopped because their college has infringed the immigration laws is very, very unfair, very unfair. We acknowledge that.

"And my department has set up what we call a task force to try to help these students cover any additional costs they have in getting to another university, helping them with the visa fees. No, it is very very unfair and there is no getting away from it."

There has been speculation that the move to strip the university of its licence to teach foreign students from outside the EU was intended to burnish the government's credentials as "tough on immigration".

But Cable denied it was a political move: "I think genuinely this wasn't a political decision by the home secretary. The way these things work is that UKBA acts a little bit like HMRC [Revenue and Customs]. If HMRC makes a ruling on the tax affairs of a company, it's not quasi-judicial, not quite, but as a statutory body they have the power to make judgments of that kind.

"And they [UKBA] have made a ruling, and there undoubtedly were irregularities at the college, some of them quite serious."

London Met has won leave to appeal against the decision. "I don't know what will come out of it," Cable said, "but it's now got very, very messy."

The business secretary also said there had been an argument in the coalition over whether to include overseas students in immigration totals - although he said that Tory universities minister David Willetts agreed with the Lib Dem position that they should not be included. A compromise had been reached, Cable said: "We will continue to count them, but there will be a separate line which will identify who are the students and who are the other people coming into the country. It is very unsatisfactory, and I do accept that."

The fringe meeting was interrupted several times by the PA system loudly playing in the audio from the main hall, including a very jolly version of I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside, complete with enthusiastic hand-clapping from delegates.

Turning away from the conference proceedings, Danny Alexander is on the Sunday Politics talking about his tax crackdown on people with £1m homes.

Alexander says the new tax unit will not be targeting everyone with a home in this bracket.

Q: Isn't the "pension for property" plan a subsidy for the better off?

Alexander says this plan will enable parents to help their children get a house. It is about inter-generational fairness, he says.

Andrew Neil says this will only help parents "with a big enough pension pot".

Q: What did you tell Vince Cable before the election about the tuition fee pledge being unaffordable? And how did he respond?

Alexander says he said it was an expensive pledge. But the Lib Dems are a democratic party?

Q: What did you tell Cable about this?

Alexander says he does not remember the details of this policy. But the manifesto proposed phasing in the policy.

Q: Did you sign the NUS pledge before or after you told Nick Clegg that the pledge was unaffordable?

Alexander says he signed it during the election campaign. By that stage the party had already had discussions about it being unaffordable. But the party had taken a decision to back the policy, he says.

Farron has finished his speech. It wasn't a classic, but his attempt to frame British politics as a conflict between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives, with Labour utterly irrelevant, was imaginative, and his attack on the Tories for abandoning their commitment to green policies was strong.

Tim Farron's speech

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem president, is speaking now.

He is the most passionate orator in the party, and so it seems a bit unfair to put him on at 10.45 on a Sunday morning. Perhaps the conference organisers want to make a point. Last year Farron had to spend the whole conference denying that he wanted to be leader.

Clegg's interview with Andrew Marr - summary

One of my colleagues was wondering whether "car crash" was an appropriate word to use about Nick Clegg's interview with Andrew Marr, although it did not strike me like that. He made his case about only accepting further spending cuts if they are balanced by some new form of wealth tax quite clearly - helped, no doubt, by the fact that he has been saying this now repeatedly for the last few days.

But he did run into problems towards the end, when Marr asked him about the fact that while Ed Miliband is willing to contemplate a deal with the Lib Dems, he is not willing to contemplate one while Clegg remains leader. Clegg can't complain, Marr suggested, because Clegg ruled out doing a deal with Labour in 2010 while Gordon Brown remained prime minister. "That's a wholly different matter," Clegg said. "The British people would not have accepted the prime minister becoming prime minister again." Marr pointed out that the British public might feel the same way about the deputy prime minister becoming deputy prime minister again in 2015. Clegg said that was "completely different", but on this point Clegg was wrong and Marr was right.

Here are the main points.

• Clegg said he was announcing a "pension for property" scheme that would allow people to use equity in their pension pots to fund a deposit for a home for their children or grandchildren.

I can announce today that the government is going to do something that has not happened before. We are going to work out ways in which parents and grandparents who want to help their children and grandchildren buy a property of their own, we are going to allow those parents and grandparents to use their pension pots to act as a guarantee so that their children and grandchildren can take out a deposit and buy a home. It's a pension for property scheme.

• He said that he has had "lengthy conversations" with senior Labour figures recently.

Grown-up politicians talk to each other across party lines. Over the last few weeks I have had lengthy conversations with Ed Miliband, David Miliband, with Tony Blair, with Peter Mandelson .... talking about Europe, talking about political reform.

• He said he was confident that he could get the Conservatives to back a new wealth tax. He said the Lib Dems would insist on this before agreeing to further spending cuts. Welfare should not be immune from further savings, he said. Asked if the Conservative-led government would make the wealthiest pay more with some new measure before the election, Clegg said: "Yes." He said he had already persuaded George Osborne to increase capital gains tax and stamp duty.

It would be unacceptable to me, it would be unacceptable to the vast majority of British people and I actually think that sensible Conservatives realise it would be unacceptable to only introduce further measures of belt-tightening in a way that only hits on the poor. That isn't right.

I will not accept a new wave of what they call fiscal retrenchment, belt-tightening, without asking people at the top to make an additional contribution. I don't think you can ask people on middle and low incomes, who after all are the vast majority of the British population, to bear the brunt of this adjustment.

• He claimed that the Lib Dems were displaying "extraordinary resilience and unity".

• He refused that his resignation as leader might be necessary for Labour to consider a coalition with the Lib Dems after the general election.

By my count, that interview included one new announcement (the grandparent house deposit one), one fresh revelation (about Clegg's contacts with Labour figures) and further details about Clegg's thinking on welfare cuts and wealth taxes, which he has already outlined in interviews over the last few days.

Q: Are you seriously suggesting you will be able to introduce a wealth tax?

Clegg says he is saying that money should be raised as fairly as possible.

Q: Are you suggesting a mansion tax?

Clegg says he beleives in a mansion tax because he does not see why an oligarch living in London should pay the same council tax as someone living next door.

Q: Is there a snowball's chance in hell of a Conservative government introducing a wealth tax?

Clegg says he thinks there is a chance of the government imposing more taxes on the wealthy. George Osborne has already accepted the principle behind this, he suggests.

People "of considerable wealth" want to play their part, he says.

This is not the politics of envy, he says.

Q: But is it going to happen during this government? Isn't this just words?

Clegg says so far he has failed to persuade David Cameron and Osborne to back a mansion tax. But the mansion tax is not the only way of getting people at the top to make a fair contribution. This has already happened. "We can do more of that."

Q: Can you persuade the government to introduce a new wealth tax measure?

Sunday morning during party conference season is always a moment of news overload because all the papers have their own Lib Dem conference stories. Today is no exception, although the story that is leading the BBC news, the Mail on Sunday tax crackdown story is rather less impressive once you examine the small print. (See below.) Never mind. Here's my round up of the main Lib Dem stories around.

Fellow Lib Dem Danny Alexander, the Treasury Chief Secretary, who was accused of benefiting from a tax loophole on second homes, told The Mail on Sunday that the Coalition is to launch a triple-pronged attack on the well-off designed to raise hundreds of millions of pounds.

Half a million people with property and assets worth over £1 million will come under extra scrutiny to make sure they are not cheating the taxman.

The Government is to order new BBC Director General George Entwistle to stop its celebrities and executives using tax avoidance ploys.

Soccer players and managers who dodge tax face fines of up to £100,000.

If you read the Mail on Sunday, you will see that people with homes worth more than £1m will not be required to pay a penny more in tax than they are already paying at the moment. But, in a report that has gone down very well with Alexander and his colleagues, I'm told, the Mail on Sunday is presenting his policy as a “mansion tax” imposed the back door.

Vince Cable has signalled a new assault on tax havens and non-domiciled millionaires in a move that will put further distance between the coalition partners and appeal directly to Liberal Democrat activists gathering at the party conference in Brighton.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the business secretary demanded tough action against “shady” wealthy people who make “systematic and cynical” use of offshore havens such as Monaco and the Cayman Islands.

I have always said never say never. I am not remotely thinking of competing for Nick’s job. He will, I’m sure, remain as the leader and I am happily working with him but, as I say, never say never — who knows what will happen in the world.

Nick Clegg has lost the confidence of Liberal Democrat members, a poll reveals for the first time today, as the Deputy Prime Minister attempts to persuade his party to stick with him for the "second half" of the coalition government.

A poll for Lib Dem Voice of paid-up party members, seen by The Independent on Sunday, shows that the Lib Dem leader's personal rating has fallen below zero for the first time, to minus 2 per cent.

The same poll put Mr Clegg on plus 13 per cent in August and plus 19 per cent in June. And an overwhelming majority – 79 per cent – of Lib Dem members think being in coalition will be bad for the party's election prospects in 2015.

The ICM survey for The Sunday Telegraph puts Mr Cable, who has not ruled himself out as a future leader, 11 points ahead of Mr Clegg among voters of all parties. Among Lib Dem supporters, Mr Cable’s lead is seven per cent.

Tens of billions of pounds of investment in low-carbon, job-creating energy infrastructure projects that are "ready to go" could be lost to Britain because of an anti-green movement that is sweeping through the Tory party, the Liberal Democrat energy secretary warns today.

In an interview with the Observer, Ed Davey describes a "Tea Party tendency" among Conservative MPs who question climate change and green investment as "perverse", and says it is creating deep uncertainty for an industry that could do much to help lift the country out of the economic doldrums.

Writing in a pamphlet to be launched on Sunday [Reeves] insists that the broad thrust of the government's deficit reduction plan is right and admits that the eurozone crisis is the major stumbling block. But he speaks of frustration at the mistakes the government has made, in what he concedes could be viewed as a "searing critique".

He writes: "Nobody knows for sure whether tightening at the pace set by the coalition government has choked off growth, or laid the foundations for recovery. For what it is worth, I think the coalition tightened a little more than necessary in the first two years; relied a bit too much on spending cuts rather than tax rises to fill the hole; and above all has taken a myopically conservative approach to borrowing for investment."

Admitting she would be called "mean" and "sour-faced" by some people, Mrs Featherstone said: "There is a real argument about what is OK in the public space. If you are on the Tube you may find Page 3 is facing you and your young daughter and you may not want that to be a role model for her.

"There is an army on the other side hurtling abuse. It's not simply about equal pay. It's about the constant drip, drip of women being sexualised in the public space [which] has a great bearing on attitudes and domestic violence.

Motorists were told to expect the biggest ever shake-up in transport policy last night after a minister predicted the abolition of vehicle tax, big cuts in fuel duties and a new system of road tolls for every mile travelled.

Transport Minister Norman Baker said a national system of road pricing was inevitable, adding: “Every government of every colour will get there, whatever parties say now.”

He explained that the drift towards electric and cleaner cars would force the Treasury to look at replacing the billions of pounds it is likely to lose through traditional carbon tax revenues.

So Cameron still needs the Lib Dems. But he does not necessarily need Clegg. He, like the rest of us, must have watched incredulously as the Deputy Prime Minister decided that the way to deal with tuition fees, his most serious mistake, was to make a YouTube video about it before his party conference. He must have watched again, with redoubled incredulity, as the video, remixed to music, became a hit, magically softening the bitter edge of voter rage. But he knows that Clegg is still a liability not just for the Lib Dems but for the coalition, and no amount of computer-generated singing can turn him into an asset.

That is why the Vince Cable phenomenon is the story of this week's Lib Dem conference. Recent opinion polls, including today's from ComRes, suggest the party would do better if Clegg were replaced by the Business Secretary. Such findings are unusual: alternative leaders are rarely well-known enough. Yet, just now, two party leaders are stalked by more popular shadows: Vince and Boris. The only recent precedent was Gordon Brown: polls briefly suggested that Labour would do better with him as leader before the 2005 election.

As the Lib Dems have discovered, it is a challenge sustaining a distinctive identity as the junior partner in a coalition. But in some ways, their rivals are helping them carve out some potential electoral niches. It is a long time since I heard David Cameron describe himself as a "liberal Tory". It is also a long time since he claimed that a government led by him would be "the greenest government ever". The shrivelling of liberal and green Toryism creates space for the Lib Dems to be clearly differentiated from their frenemies in the coalition.